30 March 2012

One of the highlights of the Kawamoto-Norstein event at Forum des Images in Paris was
the screening of the rare Tadahito
Mochinaga film Little Black Sambo and
the Twins (Chibikuro Sanbo to futago no otōto, 1957). During their lecture on the life and career
of Kihachirō Kawamoto, animation experts Ilan Nguyen
and Serge Éric Ségura showed the
opening few minutes of Little Black Sambo
(ちびくろさんぼのとらたいじ, 1956) – the film that puppet animation
pioneer Mochinaga showed at the first Vancouver International Film Festival and
caught the eye of Arthur Rankin, Jr.
(learn more).

Little Black Sambo and the Twins was screened in its entirety. It is the sequel to Little Black Sambo and was screened in its entirety (17 minutes) in
a programme of short films by Kihachirō
Kawamoto. Kawamoto did not animate
this film, but he did make the puppets for it.

Both Little Black Sambo and Little
Black Sambo and the Twins are adaptations of books written and illustrated
by Scottish children’s author Helen
Bannerman (1862-1946). The
Edinburgh-born author lived for much of her life in India where her husband
William worked as an officer in the Indian Medical Service. The heroes of many of her books are south
Indian and Tamil children. The original
books were meant to educate and entertain English speaking children about the
indigenous Indian and Tamil cultures.
From today’s perspective Bannerman’s work depicts a colonialist view of
these cultures in a similar vein as Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894).

The Story of Little Black Sambo was immensely popular in the first half of the
20th century, but unfortunately later US editions of the story
replaced Bannerman’s illustrations with racist African stereotypes. Out of cultural and geographical ignorance, these stories
retain the same settings and animals, thus promoting the false notion that tigers,
etc. live in Africa. The most notorious of
these is Wizard of Oz illustrator John R. Neill’s 1908 version of Little Black Sambo, which transformed Sambo
into an offensive pickaninny character. This is
believed to have contributed to the use of “sambo” as a racist slur. The poet and social activist Langston Hughes condemned Little Black Sambo in 1935 as a "pickaninny
variety" of storybook, "amusing undoubtedly to the white child, but
like an unkind word to one who has known too many hurts to enjoy the additional
pain of being laughed at." (source)

Frank Dobias’s
illustrations of the 1927 Macmillan edition of Little Black Sambo are equally as offensive as those of Neill and
they are the ones that the Japanese publisher Iwanami Shoten used when they
published a Japanese edition of the controversial book. As this is the most well known version of the
stories in Japan, many mistakenly believe it to be the original illustrations
of the story. Other Japanese publishers
also created their own editions of the stories.
The book was discontinued in 1988 because of the racist nature of the
illustrations, but was recently reprinted by a small press called Zuiunsha with
Dobias’s offensive illustrations (learn more). The
quotes from the president of Zuiunsha in this Guardian
article demonstrate the publishing company’s complete ignorance as to why
the books are considered racist.

Knowing this background, I was
somewhat trepidatious about seeing Mochinaga’s film at Forum des images. It does indeed depict an African child in a
non-African /pseudo-African setting full of animals that don’t quite fit the locale, but I was
relieved that it was nowhere near as offensive as Ub Iwerks’s cringe-worthy 1935 adaptation of Little Black Sambo that portrayed the characters in “black face”
complete with a Mammy caricature who uses stereotypical language such as “Now
run along and play honey child, but watch out for that bad ole tiger. That ole tiger sho’ do like dark meat!” The Iwerks version promotes terrible ignorance about black people in the name of comedy. For example, in the opening scene, Mammy washes Sambo and it makes the water turn black.

Ub Iwerks 1935 film poster and screencap of title card.

Mochinaga's version of Little Black Sambo and the Twins is not without ethnic stereotyping – Sambo’s
mother is a large, round woman who does fit the “Mammy” stereotype. I am not familiar enough with African
landscape and cultures to judge the authenticity of the African characters in
the film, but in my estimation the approach taken towards the characters is
very different from the Ub Iwerks animated short. The Iwerks short has clearly exaggerated the
black stereotypes in order to get laughs from the audience, whereas the Mochinaga
film has gone for the kawaii approach
to depicting the black characters. The ethnicity of the central characters is not exaggerated for the sake of laughs, rather Sambo and his family are depicted in a loving way. The laughs in the film are either of the pratfall variety or at the funny things that children and animals do that we recognize from our own lives.

The
Kawamoto-made puppets also do not resemble the Dobias illustrations familiar to
Japanese children. The African
characters do not have exaggerated lips and eyes. At least, the eyes are not exaggerated in the
tradition of the pickaninny caricature.
They are large and doe-like – the kind of Bambi eyes that we today
associate with anime. In contrast to the
mother, the father is tall and slender and wears what appears to be a fez – giving
him a very North African look. This
suggests that Mochinaga and Kawamoto made an effort to learn about African
dress, but did not necessarily stick to one particular African culture. The characters do have large ears, but no
more so than white and Asian characters made by Mochinaga and Kawamoto in the
1950s and 1960s. Apart from the darker
skin tone and the curly hair, the children look very much like dolls and
illustrations of Japanese children from the early to middle 20th
century.

The story of Little Black Sambo and the Twins is quite straightforward. Sambo’s parents have to run an errand and
they leave Sambo at home to babysit his twin brothers. Sambo is a very responsible brother, but when
he takes his eyes off the twins for a moment to do a chore, an oversized
vulture (at least three times larger than the toddler twins - in fact, it is so big that in the opening credits when it is flying around in the background, I thought it was a dragon) kidnaps the twins
and holds them captive at the top of a tall tree. A pair of friendly monkeys offer to help
Sambo find his siblings. They are aided
by a friendly tropical bird (possibly a parrot?) who leads them to the tree
where the twins are being held captive.
While the vulture is away checking on his/her own children, Sambo and
the monkeys climb the tree to rescue the twins.
The vulture returns before the second twin is safely on the ground and
Sambo engages in a fight with the bird.
As Sambo is fighting the vulture, his parents return to find their
children missing and follow the noise of the fight to come to their children’s
aid. The story ends with the family
happily reunited. They hold a
celebratory feast and thank their animal friends for their assistance.

In the original story by Helen
Bannerman, the twins (unfortunately named “Woof” and “Moof”) are kidnapped by
evil monkeys and an eagle aids Sambo in rescuing the young boys. I have never read the Japanese edition of
this storybook so I do not know whether or not the changes in the story were
written by Mochinaga and his screenwriter Haruo Mura or by the translator of
the Japanese edition of the storybook.
Whatever the case, the Mochinaga puppet animation is presenting a common
storyline in children’s literature: the family unit is threatened by an outside
force, the members of the family join forces to combat this threat, and the
story ends with the family intact again.
The anamorphic animals add interest for children, and one can imagine
children who view this film re-enacting the dramatic scenes with their own toys
at home.

The film is shot in black and white
– which was quite common in the 1950s due to the cost of colour film
stock. It is also possible that the film
was made with television in mind, and television was in black and white in
those early years. The puppets that
Kawamoto made are sweet. The faces are
very expressive and the costuming and sets have been beautifully designed –
simple and straightforward so as not to distract from the expression of the
character movement. It is a first rate
puppet film for the 1950s – not as complex and elaborate as the works of Jiri
Trnka and other Eastern European animators of the time, but certainly very well
planned and executed.

Although it is clear that Little Black Sambo and the Twins was
meant for preschool aged children, it is not something I would watch with young
children not only because of the inaccurate portrayal of African people but
also because it could instil in them an irrational fear of large birds of prey. That being said, it is a shame that this and
Mochinaga’s other puppet animation films are not more widely available for they
are invaluable to the study of animation history and to the study of the
portrayal of ethnic minorities in Japanese culture.

29 March 2012

At 19:00, Ilan Nguyen led a conversation with Yuri Norstein about his longstanding and complex relationship with
Japan. In addition to having been a
friend to his fellow animator Kihachirō
Kawamoto, whom he still affectionately calls “Chiro” just as he did when
Kawamoto was alive, Norstein is revered as a master of animation in Japan and
has visited the country on many occasions.

Norstein discovered Japanese culture
at a young age. In his mid-teens,
he found a small book of haiku poetry
by Bashō in the library. The book featured one poem per page – a clever
editing choice which emphasized the minimalism of the three stark lines of poetry on
the plain page. One of the poems that he
recalls being in the book is the famous one about the frog:

furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

mizu no oto

an ancient pond

a frog jumps in

the splash of water

(Bashō, 1686)

This book of haiku made a very strong impression on Norstein. He had learned in school that poems had
rhythm and rhyme yet these poems had neither.
He was moved to buy himself a copy of the book and each time he looked
at the poems, he was surprised anew by them.
“Can one say that this is poetry?” he would ask himself.

Many years later he came across a
book of Japanese woodcut prints at a friend’s house and he was again
surprised. The images had a different
sense of perspective and volume than what he was used to seeing in Russia. For Norstein, it was a revelation to realize
that there was another way of seeing the world and these two incidents marked
the beginning of his love for Japan.

He got to know Russian translators
of Japanese and began to learn more about the importance of gesture and
movement in Japanese culture. One thing
that he learned from Japanese culture was that a subject that is very simple
can express something very great. He
explained that he finds the same thing in the fiction of Marcel
Proust. In À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-27), Proust’s
simple observations of everyday life take on great meaning. Norstein also remarked that this was also
true of Homer’sThe Iliad.

While listening to Norstein talk, it
occurred to me that his interest in Japanese poetry, and particularly way in
which time is expressed in Japanese poetry has much in common which his fellow
compatriots Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, who were both also
greatly influenced by haiku poetry and Japanese aesthetics. The influence of Eisenstein's writings on Norstein has been written about by animation scholar Nobuaki Doi (see his ASIFA profile). The conversation with Norstein was
accompanied by a slide show by Ilan Nguyen and among the many photographs and
items that were shown there was a photograph of Norstein visiting the Eisenstein
Cine-club in Tokyo.

I had presumed that Norstein and
Kawamoto became friends during Kawamoto’s tour of Eastern Europe in
1963-64. Although a photograph apparently does
exist of Kawamoto with another Russian animator (it was not in the slideshow) in which Norstein can be seen
working on something in the background, Norstein apparently does not recall
Kawamoto’s visit at that time. Their friendship
began at the World Animation Festival Varna in Bulgaria in 1985 where they met
and talked up a storm. Their friendship
developed over the coming years at animation festivals such as the second
animation festival in Hiroshima in 1987 where Norstein was on jury alongside Te Wei, Paul Driessen, Nicole Salomon, Bruno Bozzetto, and Osamu Tezuka. This festival was really a star-studded
affair with Karel Zeman acting as the International Honorary President and John Halas being the
special guest. This event is also
notable as being Norstein’s first visit to Japan.

Norstein shared many amusing
anecdotes. Some of my favourites:

the photo from Hiroshima 1987
prompted Norstein to say that he did not
know Tezuka very well but that he thought his skill as an artist was amazing

there was a wonderful photograph of
Norstein sitting at the foot of the Laputa robot on the rooftop of the Studio
Ghibli museum. Norstein laughed with
delight at this photograph and it inspired him to even burst into a song from
his childhood

when discussing the Laputa International Animation
Festival, Norstein talked about the fact that he was criticized for always
picking the same guy for the Yuri Norstein Award (he didn’t say the name, but it was clear he was referring to Kunio Katō who won twice: in 2001 for The
Apple Incident and in 2004 for The
Diary of Tortov Roddle). His
response to this criticism was: “well, I don’t know this guy personally, but his stuff is great!”

he was quite modest when Nguyen pointed
out that his films ranked #1 and #2 on the Laputa
150

if he had had to make Tale of Tales with the interference of producers,
it would never have been made

“the most simple techniques in animation
can result in something really spectacular”

On Winter Days:

Kawamoto loved Chiro’s spirit
(Kawamoto): he hated things that were false and his friendship with Kawamoto was the only reason Norstein
agreed to do Winter Days

Norstein wanted to have accurate
details in his contribution but he didn’t want it to be too Japanese

in order to get the details right,
he paid a lot of attention to how a Japanese person would move, carry a bag,
wear their hat, and other gestures.

the Japanese loved his contribution
to Winter Days, but he is critical of
himself

the most difficult part was getting
the colour palette right. Once they (he
and his wife, along with consultation with “Chiro”) got the right colours (gold, maroon, some blue and a touch of grey), everything else fell into place

re: Bashō meeting Chikusai: “In
animation the real and the mythological can meet.”

““Chiro” could make everyone
laugh. He had such a wonderful
laugh. He laughed all the time.”

The evening concluded with a
screening of The Book of the Dead on
35mm. As with Winter Days, I noticed many details about the puppets and the
scenery that were not as noticeable when watching a digitized version on a
TV. The details were so vivid: the lines
on the puppets’ faces indicating age or weariness, the weave of kimono and
other fabrics, each thread of hair carefully placed on the puppets heads, and
so on. As I mentioned in my guest stint on Vcinema in 2010, The Book of the Dead
is a film that requires multiple viewings in order to fully understand all the
nuances of meaning. One thing that never
ceases to amaze me when watching The Book
of the Dead is the movement of the kimonos in the wind. It looks so effortless, but the time and
energy that went into painstakingly animating those sequences frame-by-frame
boggles the mind.

So ends Day 2 – I became acquainted with a number of interesting people between screenings.
Most notably, animator Florentine Grelier (official website) and animation expert Giannalberto
Bendazzi , author of Cartoons: One
Hundred Years of Cinema Animation. Flroentine has posted some lovely images in pixels that she made of Norstein - check it out.

28 March 2012

I rose early on
Saturday and hit the streets of Paris on foot to take in the sights before
great swarms of tourists descended. As a cineaste, one feels a sense of déjà vu
around every corner in Paris as I recognized landmarks and architectural
features from the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and many
others.

After brunch, I
headed to the Centre Pompidou because I had heard from Akino Kondoh (official
website)
about the event Planète Manga being held there until May 27th. The event is great for Parisians, for it
means that many wonderful animated films are being screened at the Pompidou
this spring from early anime like Kenzō
Masaoka’s The Spider and the Tulip
(read review) to Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo
Godfathers (read review), but unfortunately for me there
was no accompanying exhibition. I did
follow the manga sound effects painted on the floor to have a peek in the
Planète Manga salon where a workshop was being held for young people interested
in drawing their own manga.

My trip to the
Pompidou was not in vain; however, for the bookstore there had an exciting
selection of French releases of manga and anime including everything from Akino
Kondoh’s Les insects en moi to a
photobook tie-in for the latest Gorō
Miyazaki film From Up on Poppy Hill
and from Paprika to Winter Days. There were a load of DVDs that I had to add
to my wish list for my budget could not stretch to buying them on this
trip. As the Cinéma du Réel was also on in the basement of the Pompidou, the bookstore had copies
of two trilingual (JP/FR/EN) DVDs of the films of Yuki Kawamura (official website), a Japanese filmmaker who is based in Paris. Rather than buy something for myself, I
decided to pick up something for the kids.
I passed on the over-priced Takashi
Murakami stuffed toys and went for the Nano
Blocks (official website).

In addition, the library housed in
the Centre Pompidou is running a free exhibition called Art Spiegelman Co-Mix featuring original art by one of the greatest
living comic artists. There was a wide
range of illustrative work on display from Maus-related materials (including a long interview Spiegelman did with his father in
the 1970s) to In the Shadow of No Towers
(post 9/11 theme) and his cover art for The
New Yorker. For those not able to
catch this exhibition at the Pompidou library, the next best thing is to
purchase the amazing books MetaMaus
(includes DVD) and Art Spiegelman Co-Mix.

I skipped the first screening at
Forum des Images on this day, for I have both the US and Japanese DVDs of
Kawamoto’s short puppet films (see: Kawamoto's Animated Shorts on DVD). Instead,
I took a stroll around the grounds of the Louvre to do a short photo shoot with
Sakadachi-kun. As my long time readers will know, I began
writing about alternative Japanese animation upon the discovery of Tomoyasu Murata’s films in late
2006. Sakadachi-kun (aka Handstand Boy)
is the central character in a series of films by Murata, and I have recently
started a tumblr called The Adventures of Sakadachi-kun where I feature photographs I have taken of my
figurine of Sakadachi-kun as he joins me in my travels. The titles of each photograph are a parody of
the titles of the Sakadachi-kun films.

At 16:30, I attended the screening
of Yuri Norstein’s major works: The
Heron and the Crane (1974), The
Hedgehog in the Fog (1975), Tale of Tales
(1979) and 30 minutes from The Overcoat
(unfinished). On more than one occasion
over the weekend, Norstein voiced his delight in being able to screen his works
on 35mm. He had been told that 35mm
films were being thrown in the garbage and he feels that it is the best medium
for watching not only his films, but films in general. In introducing this programme of shorts,
Norstein likened our experience to having his whole life in capsule form.

Another theme that Norstein raised
over the weekend was the cultural importance of art. At this screening he said that we are living
in very difficult times and that in such times art is what brings people
together. This was certainly true at the
Forum des Images where the audiences were really captivated by the films. There was applause between each film and an
enthusiastic standing ovation at the end.
The audience seemed to adore Tale
of Tales in particular.

It is truly a magical experience
watching Norstein’s films in a cinema projected on 35mm. It is difficult to find words to describe the
different between the colours and textures on film as opposed to in a digital
format – for it is a difference that one can not only see but feel. The only drawback to seeing the works on film
was of course the wear and tear of age on the film. In The
Heron and the Crane in particular the white of the background and the white
of the two birds washed together as some detail had been lost due to age. In contrast, The Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale
of Tales looked amazing on film as one can see the details of the textures
and layering very clearly in this format.

Good Night, Children

Sugar ad

The main programme of short films
was followed by the four commercials Norstein did for a Russian sugar company
in the mid-1990s and clips from the animation that he did for the Russian television
programme Good Night, Children. Before and after the screenings, Norstein
voiced his regret at having to do commercial work to make a living. He seemed nostalgic for the USSR days
when there was a higher regard for the role of an artist in society.

After the screening, someone in the
audience asked him if there is any modern animation that he likes and he
replied that nothing really interests him about computer animation. He did say that he had respect for Pixar, but
he seemed to feel that computers were leading the art rather than merely being
at the service of art.

27 March 2012

On Friday, March 23rd, I took the
ICE train from Frankfurt to Paris to attend the event Kawamoto-Norstein: The Puppet Master
and the Painter Animator at Forum des Images. The opening
event was an exciting affair for not only was the legendary Russian animator Yuri Norstein there as a guest, but the
Canadian pinscreen animator Jacques
Drouin and one half of the Brothers
Quay were also in the audience.
Drouin was one of the 35 animators who contributed a stanza to Winter Days (read review), and this was a rare opportunity to see the
film on 35mm.

The event was hosted by Isabelle Vanini (Forum des Images
programmer) and Ilan Nguyen (Tokyo
University of the Arts). Kihachirō Kawamoto, in whose memory
this event was dedicated, had been to Forum des Images on three occasions. On one of these occasions, he presented Winter Days. This 2003 event was captured on video and we
got to watch footage of Kawamoto introducing the film. This was followed by Kawamoto’s Self Portrait (read review) and as part of the introduction to
Winter Days, Norstein shared some of
his memories and impressions of Kawamoto.

Norstein spoke of the great pleasure
that Kawamoto took in making films with friends, and he joked that he had once
seen a photo of Kawamoto at aged 3 and that it struck him that Kawamoto had
never aged. He still looked exactly the
same. Norstein felt that Kawamoto never
grew up. He retained his sense of
childlike joy, and this could be heard in his infectious laugh.

As Norstein spoke, a photograph of
the two men together holding a puppet from Winter Days was projected on the
screen behind him. Kawamoto apparently
gave this puppet to Norstein as a gift.
The last time that Norstein and Kawamoto spoke together,
Kawamoto expressed an interested in making a film about the life of the Chinese
poet Li Po. I found this interesting because Kawamoto had
made a short short animation for an Absolute Vodka internet campaign in 1997 (read review) in which the poet drinks vodka
under flowering cherry blossoms.

Kawamoto came up with the idea of
adapting the renku poem Winter Days after a discussion with
Norstein in which Norstein expressed a wish to someday adapt the haiku poems of Bashō into animation. This
is why Norstein was honoured with the task of adapting the first stanza of Winter Days. It was Norstein’s own idea to introduce an encounter between Chikusai and Basho in his interpretation of the first stanza. Read more about this at Anipages.
Kawamoto was delighted with the idea, and Norstein said that his
contribution was well received by Japanese audiences though he himself was not
fully convinced because he is a perfectionist and always thinks he can do
better.

I have watched Winter Days on DVD many times but this was my first time watching
it on 35mm. It’s a very different
experience watching it on 35mm – the colours are so different, the luminosity
of the image is different, my awareness of depth of frame was heightened, and I
noticed many interesting textures in some of the films that I had not before. The screening was followed by the
“Making Of” documentary that appears on the DVD and this was in turn followed
by questions from the general public.
During the discussions, a slideshow of rare images of Kawamoto
screened.

One audience member was struck by
the music that was used in Winter Days. The composition masterfully acts not only as
an accompaniment to the action of each stanza, but also aids in creating a
sense of continuity between each short short.
Norstein was unable to answer this question, but Nguyen was able to
identify to composer as Shinichirō Ikebe,
who also did the soundtrack to Kawamoto’s short film Tabi (1973). Ikebe is, of
course, well known to fans of Japanese cinema for his work composing the
soundtracks to many Akira Kurosawa
films (Kagemusha, Madadayo, Dreams,
etc.). He has also worked on several Shōhei Imamura films such as Vengeance is Mine (1979), The Battle of Narayama (1983), The Eel (1997), and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001). Hayao
Miyazaki’s anime TV series Future Boy
Conan (1978) was also scored by Ikebe.

One audience member seemed
disgruntled that Winter Days appeared
to only have had men work on it. This
false impression was given by the Making Of documentary, which only features
male animators. There was footage taken
of the female animators at work among the extras on the Japanese DVD, but this
didn’t make it into the edited Making Of doc which due to time constraints only
included 17 animators. There is an
expensive box set edition of Winter Days
available in Japan, and I have heard that it contains extended interviews with
all participants.

Okuyama working on Winter Days

Several notable female animators
worked on Winter Days:

Noriko Morita does
a lot of collaborative dance performances, often bringing together animation,
music, and dance in innovative video installation performances. See her profile at Monstra this year.

Reiko Okuyama
and her husband Yoichi Kotabe
collaborated on one stanza using Okuyama’s distinctive copperplate engraving
technique. Okuyama, who sadly passed
away in 2007, worked on many classic Toei Doga animated films and series. (read more about her).

Maya Yonesho, a stop motion animator who divides her time between Europe and Japan (read more about her).

I.K.I.F. (half
of which is female animator Sonoko
Ishida). I.K.I.F. have done special effects on loads of anime films from Pat Labor to Doraemon.

Stop motion animation pioneer Fusako Yusaki, who has lived and worked
in Italy since the 1960s. (read more about her)

I should also mention that many male animators have women (often their partners/spouses or former students) working as assistants
on their films. Most notably, Yuri
Norstein’s wife Francheska Yarbusova
and Kōji Yamamura’s wife Sanae Yamamura – both of whom are very
talented artists in their own rights.

Someone asked Norstein about how he
overcame the language barrier in order to communicate with Kawamoto. He explained that he had a translator, but he
also joked that after drinking sake,
one understands everything. I was
impressed by how spry Norstein was for someone of his age. He became especially animated when talking
about Kawamoto, and I really felt that a lot of the complements that he paid to
Kawamoto (eternally youthful, full of good humour and joie de vivre) could also
be applied to Norstein himself. He
deflected an impertinent question about his ongoing adaptation of NikolaiGogol’s The Overcoat with
a joke. My French is a bit rusty, but it was something about how he is only the pilot of the plane. The implication being, I suppose, that the pilot is not in control of the weather and turbulence he might encounter along the way.

All in all, it was a very pleasant
and informative evening – followed by a wine and cheese where I got to chat a
little bit with Alexis Hunot of Zewebanim and met some of his students. I also met Marc Aguesse of Catsuka. More on my animation weekend in Paris in
coming instalments.

19 March 2012

In collaboration with the Frankfurt am Main transportation authority VGF (Stadtwerke Verkehrs-gesellschaft Frankfurt am Main), Nippon Connection 2012 is awarding the Nippon in Motion Award to the best short-short film spot for the festival. The winning film will appear on video screens in U-Bahn stations throughout Frankfurt in the run-up to and during the festival and the winner will be awarded a cash prize of 250€.

Everyone can participate in the voting process by going to the Nippon in Motion webpage and voting for your favourite. The eleven finalists use a variety of techniques from stop motion animation to montage editing. Click on the images to watch the short clips in a pop-up window. To vote, click on the Facebook "like" icon. The voting concludes on March 31st when the winner will be announced.

18 March 2012

After reading Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “The Nose” (鼻/Hana, 1916),
the great writer Natsume Sōseki is
said to have written a letter to Akutagawa proclaiming: “I found your piece ["The
Nose"] very interesting. Sober and
serious without trying to be funny. It
exudes humour, a sure sign of refined taste. Furthermore, the material is fresh and
eye-catching. Your style is well-polished,
admirably fitting.” (source)

One could use similar adjectives to
describe Taku Furukawa’s animated
short Nose Tale (はなのはなし/Hana no hanashi, 2010). Reportedly inspired by a bout of hay fever (source
– which would explain the runny noses of many of the supporting characters in
this film), Nose Tale is a mash-up of
five classic stories from around the world. Four of these stories concern men with
oversized noses: “The Nose” by
Akutagawa, “The Nose” (1835-36) by Nikolai
Gogol, “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (1881-83) by Carlo Collodi, and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1897) by Edward Rostand.

Furukawa starts off by cutting between each of the stories, but in the climactic scene the men with giant
noses all come together from their disparate times and places for a dragon
viewing party – a concept adapted from another Akutagawa story “Dragon” (龍, 1919). The dramatic conclusion
is unexpected and delightful.

The concept is indeed fresh and
eye-catching and exudes the tongue-in-cheek sense of humour one has come to
expect from a Furukawa film. In all my
years studying the art of cinema, I never expected to encounter a film that makes
a point of cutting between stories by matching the shape of an oversized
nose. It is so ridiculous as to be
wonderful.

The stories are also tied together
by the music of Toshiyuki Honda,
whose compositions have also featured in the animated films Miyuki-chan
in Wonderland (Tetsuro Aoki, 1995), Metropolis
(Rintaro, 2001), and Yona Yona Penguin
(Rintaro, 2009). The pieces “Spinel” and
“Tellurium” from Songs of the Milky Way and“TERRA”, an étude for saxophone, were
arranged and performed by Honda himself.

Nose Tale is available on the Takun Films 2 DVD, which can be
purchased at Anido. ORDER NOW

17 March 2012

When I first discovered the
animation of Shiho Hirayama (平山志保), b. 1979 in 2009, I was delighted by the simplicity
and humour of her works. She has a great
eye for movement and the transitions in her short line drawing film Swimming (2008) are delightful in their
gracefulness and originality.

With Sound of Life (生活の音, 2010), Hirayama adds the
three-dimensionality of claymation to her trademark line drawing animation
style. Sound of Life is an example of
how animation can make the ordinary extraordinary and cause us to think about
our lives from a new perspective. I was
reminded of Nick Park’s Creature Comforts (1989), which
animated interviews with people about their daily lives, transforming ordinary people
into claymation animals living in enclosures at the zoo. Sound
of Life does not use interviews or dialogue, but instead the soundtrack
consists of the noises that one encounters in the course of the day. The soundtrack blends documentary sound with musical
interpretation of the soundtrack of our lives (piano, synth) which Hirayama
mixed herself.

The film begins in a minimalistic way:
three children kicking a ball around in an undefined public space. A woman joins the scene and picks up the clay
ball and looks at it and the scene shifts to a moving walkway (of the kind one
might find in extra long corridors when changing trains in central Tokyo)
complete with the soft female voice that warns you to watch your step. Bustling crowds where the line drawn people’s
hair has been replaced with colourful clay.
Blue clay fills the screen, as if replicating the slightly
claustrophobic feeling of being caught up in a crowd.

There’s a lovely sequence of people boarding
a train, with the clay filling the windows of the train. The train’s departure is captured with the
blurring movement of the clay, and then Hirayama transitions into a scene of motorcycles
on the street. She ease with which
Hirayama changes perspective and scene recalls the great master of changing
perspective, Georges Schitzgebel.

From traffic noises and road repair
drilling to the more subtle sounds of the wind in the trees or the more mundane
sounds of a taxi driver yawning as he waits at an intersection with his turn
indicator on, Hirayama draws our attention to the sounds of everyday life that we
might otherwise ignore. The animation
movement and the amount of clay used onscreen increases as the soundtrack becomes
more filled with music/sound. Soon there are no
more line drawings left, but the screen fills with clay sequences depicting a
bird feeding its young, a mother with an infant, and the film returns to the
image it began with: children playing with a ball. The boys remain faceless, but the screen is full
of colour this time. The closing credits
are played over an abstract sequence of clay colourfully moving and shifting as
if powered by the forces of nature.

It is an uplifting experience to
watch Sound of Life as the film
reminds us not only of how our lives are all interconnected by our shared
experiences of sound, but also how the sounds that make up our everyday lives can
affect our mood and general well being. With
so many people today blocking out the sounds of life by listening to music or
podcasts on their portable devices, Sound
of Life draws attention to the simple pleasures of listening and being aware
of the environment in which we live.

13 March 2012

Hiroco Ichinose’s quirky animated shorts have been delighting festival audiences since
2006. The Last Breakfast (2006), Ha・P (2008), and Cow’s Day (2009) combine stylistic sparseness with a touch
of the surreal much like the films of her mentor Taku Furukawa.

Her most recent independent work, Two Tea Two,
has a very tactile feel to it, with its inky lines drawn on a textured
paper. An alarm clock rings, awakening a
long-haired woman with an angular face sleeping naked in her bed. She tilts her head and contorts herself into
a round shape, as if stretching her body awake.
She rushes off-screen and we hear a door close. She reappears again in a loose fitting
dress. The sound suggests she is now on
a public street and we see her gaze in a window, her face reflecting in a
window as if she were a two-headed creature as she observes a cup of tea.

Cut to the woman seated in a low
chair, her body oversized and contorted, as she tries to drink from her tea
cup. She looks up and a lovely short
sequence unfolds in which we see traces of the world outside the café window –
black ink on yellow paper. A shadow of
another female figure appears outside the window looking in at our
protagonist. Two women or the woman’s
face reflected in the window? She tilts
her head inspecting the reflection of herself.
When she straightens, her mirror image remains contorted. She pokes the contorted mirror image of
herself and the mirror image rounds into her chubby form again, knocking the
lid off the sugar dish as she floats to the other side of the table. A small insect spreads its wings and scurries
past the sugar dish.

We now have two identical women – or
the same woman reflected – sitting in low chairs facing each other, with the
coffee table hidden under the tangle of their long legs in high-heeled shoes. They stare at each other, steaming tea cups
in their hands. In a split screen, the
mirror image appears to speak to her original.

The woman with her bare shoulders above the red dress now stands in a storm, her long black hair streaming to the side in
the wind. A second head and long neck
appear – a two headed woman staring at the audience. She then curls herself into a ball and floats
away.

Back in the café, the winged insect wanders
around a stray sugar cube on the table.
It splits in half then reforms before munching on the sugar cube. The chubby version of the woman jumps past
the cashier with a chink of change hitting the counter, then sheds her clothes
as she jumps off screen. A door squeaks
as it closes on the vignette. The alarm
clock rings as the end credits roll. The
animated short finishes with a reprise of the city setting and the woman
jumping to the coffee table in her two-headed form.

For me, Two Tea Two captures the ambivalent relationship many women have
with their bodies. Rationally we may have
come to terms with our physical selves, but first thing in the morning,
pre-tea/coffee and depending on what phase of lunar cycle it is, our bodies may
feel heavy and bloated. Looking bleary
eyed in the mirror or at one’s reflection in a café window first thing in the
morning, it is not unusual for a woman to search her own face as if it were a
stranger’s, trying to reconcile our external selves with our internal selves.

I love the little touches in this
animated short of the action of city life passing by in fragments, and I
identify with the feeling of being elephantine and klutzy in a tiny café. This is a nice film to watch together with Aico Kitamura’s Getting
Dressed (2010) as both films explore the relationship between a woman’s
physical self and her state of mind.

Hiroco Ichinose (瀬皓コ, b. 1984) is, together with her husband Tomoyoshi Joko, one half of the creative animation team Decovocal. She is
a graduate of the animation department of Tokyo Polytechnic University, where
she has taught part time since 2009. In
addition to her independent animated shorts, Ichinose has worked on commercial
animation including the Rita and Whatsit
and Bee TV animated TV series.

11 March 2012

The artistic response to the devastation wrought by the Tohoku earthquake
and the ensuing tsunami and nuclear fallout at Fukushima over the past year has
been immense. The Yamagata International
Documentary festival was inundated
with documentaries addressing a wide range of responses to the events of
March 11, 2011. Some artists, such as TOCHKA
have become directly involved in the effort to restore a sense of normalcy to
the lives of the people of the region.

One of the most profound responses to the disaster is Isamu
Hirabayashi’s Noburo Ofuji Award winning animated short 663114 (2011). The environment and the problematic nature of
the relationship of human being to the environment has been a recurring theme
in Hirabayashi’s experimental films from the highly allusive piece A Story Constructed of 17 Pieces of Space
and 1 Maggot (2007) to the overtly political Conversations with Nature (2005).

The title looks like a code, but it is actually a collection of
significant numbers. The Fukushima
disaster occurred 66 years after the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. 3/11 marks the date of the
Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and 4 are the number of reactors that were
damaged at Fukushima Daiichi.

On the surface, 663114, is
a simple, straightforward animation, but upon closer
examination one finds that it has as many layers as a tree has rings. An ancient cicada crawls slowly up a vertical
surface, which we learn through the first person narration is representative of
a tree. The tree’s surface is decorated
with inkan (印鑑), the familiar red stamps that are used in lieu of signatures in
Japan. The cicada tells us that he is 66
years old, born the film implies, at the time of the atom bomb.

In addition to being spoken aloud in a deep, guttural, masculine voice, the
narration also appears in shaky, black handwritten English:

Once every 66 years,

I emerge from the ground, leave offspring and die.
Before mating,
I shed my hard shell at the risk of my life.
Our ancestors have continued this cycle countless times.
The soil of this country is very fit for us to live in.
It is free of strong pesticides and there are no landmines.
The water is delicious so the sap is delicious as well.
I will climb as high as I can.
Aiming higher and higher.
It is our natural instinct.
To survive and leave offspring.
Since the moment of shedding skin is life risking.
We choose a tree that is tall, sturdy and won’t shake that much.
Our ancestors have continued this cycle countless times.
Through the various hardships.

Though slow, the cicada’s pace is steady and its movements repetitive. In contrast to the reassuring movements of
the cicada and its narration, the music and groaning voices of the soundtrack
create a growing sense of unease. Soon,
the cicada pauses and begins to moult. Just
when he is at his most vulnerable, moments after emerging from his skin, the
earthquake strikes. The vertical
surfaces representing the tree are thrown off kilter, and many of the red inkan stamps go flying.

The cicada, resilient creature that he is, has survived this initial
onslaught by clinging to his shed skin.
He says that he needs to stretch his wings as soon as possible, but
before he can do so the tsunami strikes.
Black waves resembling claws reach out towards the cicada and soon the
screen is awash with black undulating waves. The terror of the tsunami is expressed on the
soundtrack in guttural growls and the haunting cries of voices that are
suggestive of the thousands of innocent victims of this natural catastrophe.

The waves recede and the cicada, though injured, still clings on
with one remaining leg to the damaged husk of his shed skin. “I won’t die” the cicada declares, determined
to survive and leave offspring as his ancestors did before him. A buzzing sound announces the arrival of a
black, inky cloud signifying the radiation from the manmade nuclear
disaster.

Black rain and deep-voiced throat singing accompany the closing
credit sequence. When the rain has
passed and the credits are complete, the screen goes black and then reprises
the opening credit sequence. However this
time the inkan stamps are muddled
together and blurred, and the voice is no longer deep and masculine but
distorted and echoing. We hear the
approach of the cicada before we see him this time, and when he appears on
screen we see that he has been altered beyond all recognition by the nuclear
disaster.

I am a 66 year cicada.

Once every 66 years,
I emerge from the ground, leave
offspring and die.
66 years ago, when I was born
I’ve heard that there was a big
earthquake and a big tsunami.
There was also a big accident.
I will risk my life to shed this
hard shell before mating.
Our ancestors have continued this
cycle countless times.
The soil of this country is very fit
for us to live in.
I love this country.

It is significant that Hirabayashi chose a cicada to represent the
living creatures, human and otherwise, of Japan. Insects hold a special place in the hearts of
the Japanese, and the cicadas are one of the important signifiers of
summer. One cannot imagine a summer in
Japan without the song of the cicadas and children delight in discovering and
examining the skins of the cicadas when they moult. It is a symbol of reincarnation, appearing
metaphorically in many significant works of literature such as The Tale of Genji. Cicadas are also a symbol of longevity as
they are one of the longest living insects who spend much of their life cycle
underground (normally 2-5 years).

The film looks like a cutout film made of washi paper and ink, but Hirabayashi made it using images and
textures that he found on the internet. The
inkan stamps on the surface of the tree
are metaphorically significant in the film.
In Western culture, we do still use rubber stamps to make documents
official, and this tradition gave rise to the English idiom “to rubber stamp”
something, which is usually used to describe a bureaucrat approving something
automatically without proper consideration.
In Japan, the stamp culture runs even deeper with individuals, artists,
and corporations all using stamps as their signature.

When watching 663114 the
first time, I was reminded of the common hanko (判子) stamp that one
would use to sign for the post, or to sign into work, and I thought that each of the stamps stood for
individuals affected by the disaster.
But then I realized many of the red stamps were more complex than the kind used
by individuals so I contacted Hirabayashi to ask him about their
significance. Hirabayashi told me that
the inkan are a metaphor for
contracts [of the kind we would call “red tape” in English]. He went on to explain that after the war in
Japan contracts have been given preference over the feelings of people. In the aftermath of Fukushima, he feels that this bad
attitude has risen to the surface.

Therefore, the red stamps in 663114
represent the negative force of bureaucracy, the rules that govern a society,
in contrast to the enduring life force of the cicada, who struggles to survive
at any cost. It is a powerful film, and
although it addresses a very specific Japanese historical moment, the
universality of its message has not been lost on international festival
audiences. It received a warm reception
at last year’s Viennale and it also got a special mention in the Generation
Section at the Berlinale. The jury in
this division is made up of eleven children and seven teenagers. They said of 663114:

Visuals and sound melded together flawlessly to create a
philosophical and layered masterpiece. The director conveys his message, beyond
all conventions. Through a simple metaphor he portrays the survival of a
culture, even in the face of catastrophe. (source)

Hirabayashi used the platform to remind people around the world of
the seriousness of the crisis in Fukushima: "Children are being exposed to
dangerous radioactivity a year after the earthquake. It is our responsibility
as Japanese adults to protect the children."

The soundtrack of the film is an artwork all of its own. It was composed by Osaka-based sound producer
Takashi Watanabe. During the Viennale press conference for 663114, Watanabe explained that they
approached the soundtrack as if it would be an offering to a temple. He looked to Buddhism and Shintoism in his
desire to create a new kind of sacred music.
Keitarō Iijima (Studio 301),
the sound producer on 663114,
explained that they used Japanese food for making the soundtrack including
nattō (fermented soybeans), dried Japanese noodles and also cabbage. He echoed Watanabe’s sentiments about the
sacredness of the project for them, emphasizing that he tried to have a sense
of respect for the food that they used throughout the production.